David Brooks can be a blowhard dope, and sometimes his writing infuriates me, but his short article explaining why Trump is an idiot had a great quote that stopped me to read it several times: "As the retired general Jim Mattis and Bing West once wrote, “If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”" I know better than to send my kids an article to read, but man, I really want to!
Those saxes jam - and yet I don't see them on stage with the rest of those bros. Dig the groove for sure. "Screamland" has a stressful majesty to it that also grabs my attention each time it rolls by. It unfolds and then erupts as its title might predict to you. I feel like this is an album that will do likewise, unfold further over time and show me different aspects of its nature after further enjoyment. I'll also note that I played this on the Sonos in the living room last night as I made a complicated dinner, and the algorithm's follow up tunes once this album was done were also a great vibe.
Franz Ferdinand - The Human Fear. Man, remember these dudes? Feels like they were huge once. Well, if you liked that sound from 2004, you get another heavy dose of it right here. This sounds to me exactly like it could have been a continuation of what made them sound so fun and amazing back then. That throw-back sound they brought out to the forefront then, sort of new wave, a little dash of disco, a whiff of the Beatles (and the folks who copied them), a lot of danceable pop rock bounce - it's all back here. Which is nice, if not particularly arresting. There is probably a reason I haven't gone back to the 2004 smash in a while. Album opener "Audacious" is the stream leader for now with 3.5 million streams.
When those horns pop in on the third verse, and then the guitar starts sliding around like that, I get the heavy Beatles zest in my ears. Pleasing song. I have a feeling that this will be on the ACL poster this year. They are recognizable enough for folks of several generations to be like, "oh yeah, sure, I like those guys," without being so popular that the C3 folks will need to break the bank to have them along. I will say that the electro sounds of "Hooked" is a low point on here, sort of yanks me out of my relaxed enjoyment of the rest of this. But overall, unoffensively good.
Larry June/2 Chainz - Life is Beautiful. I just fired through a Larry June review last week. This dude puts out too much music. Yet again, my dude is super crazy laid back and cool as hell. You get those same smooth, sample-laden beats from the Alchemist, but now you also get 2 Chainz adding his goofy ass to the mix. He keeps it chill though, matching the pace and vibe of the June verses. But also, some of these add a snip of menace, like the tastily tense "Colossal" that bites part of what I think of as "Paul Revere," but very well could have been a sample that Rick Rubin used back then and I just didn't know. (according to Wikipedia, that backwards woozy schoop/schloop/shoop/doo/doo thing from Paul Revere was made from scratch by Yauch by looping an 808 backwards). But, that one has some mystery and creep to it. "I Been," the third track, is the top streamer so far with 4.3 million streams.
Oh hell yeah. Wide screen video. "they got deadbeat moms now" made me laugh. But like I said before, if that doesn't make you feel rich and relaxed, I don't know what to tell you. So luxurious. Cool to think of how the Alchemist comes up with this stuff - like, does he just buy every record at every garage sale he can get to and then listen to each ancient soul/jazz album searching for cool little nuggets to snip into a beat? I love it.
Jason Isbell - Foxes in the Snow. I ran through this album several times on headphones while flying to Nashville over the weekend, and I have to say that a close and careful listen like that makes a difference. This is the semi-traditional acoustic-and-solo-and-introspective-post-divorce-album. Loads of those out there in the cannon, but apparently Isbell divorced Amanda Shires and then went in the studio for five days to bang out another set of deeply confessional tunes about hard times and mistakes made and the future that you can build by pushing through. I love it.
The opening track is the most popular, because it was the first single, and it starts with only a cappella and then adds in a light guitar picking. Another good one in here is "Don't Be Tough," which is like a list of advice topics you should give your kids. "Crimson and Clay" is also great, because you get the idea that he is turning back to what made him to figure out where to go next (and that happens to be the red clay of Alabama). I also have to call out the line in that one talking about a little noose in a locker and brown eyes crying in the hall. A tiny couplet in the song and yet you can see it all and feel the pain with just those two lines. The second-biggest streamer is the title track, and I vote you listen to that one. 817k streams.
Excellent guitar. As we wandered around Nashville after listening to this disc on the plane, this is the one that kept popping into my head, either the melody or random snippets of the lyrics. "falls asleep inside my head, seems so easy" is a lovely little snip. "Ride to Robert's" is so nice too, not only the active picking, but the story he is telling and the detail about Tennessee and Nashville and his love. He gets into hard subjects here too, his sobriety, his poor behavior in the past - he bares his soul for all to see. "Gravelweed" and "Eileen" are great with that. But that level of candor and authenticity makes this feel better than most lyrics. I love the idea of the goodbye note that he finds behind a bed, thinking that no note was left for years, only to have the goodbye note crap in his Cheerios with a pithy saying.
By the way, I read an interview with him about the final song, which he wrote for his little brother's first dance at his wedding. Pretty funny: "A: I wrote [that song] for my little brother and his wife when they got married. She came to me and asked if I would write them a first dance song. Nobody’s ever asked me that before and I thought, that’s so bold. But since you asked, I’m going to do it. ... Q: That was incredibly brave of your brother and now sister-in-law. You’ve very good at writing sad songs. A: I know. She could have gotten herself in a bind with that if I’d written a traditional song of my own. It would have been bad. Q: Did they hear the song before you sang it on their wedding day? A: No. Nobody did. I just got up and sang it while they were dancing their first dance. I wasn’t gonna get halfway through the song and be like, “and then she died of cancer.” [Laughs.] But if anybody ever asks me to do that again though, it’s fair game. I played along the first time. This time, I’m pulling some s–t. " Love that.
Excellent disc that I will keep spinning for a long time.
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